IN GRANNY'S GARDEN

by Sarah Harrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 1980

Cozy surrealism après Rousseau, with elephant, tiger, snake, snail, and other creatures large and small draped on a brick garden wall and peeping out from the ordered jungle inside Granny's garden wall. Also in the garden is a little blond boy in scarf and blazer, a bit like a little granny himself, who tells in formal old-fashioned verse how he used to wander there, imagining ""dragons and dodos, predator and prey""--though the peaceable pictures suggest no such relationship. Then ""One humid day amid the hanging green/I saw a tree where no tree should have been."" Well, the tree soon bends. ""And through the treetops, down from outer space,/ It lowered not its branches but its face./ A brontosaurus' face."" Soon, the dinorsaur speaks: ""A pleasant spot, though marshy, he averred."" And after a rumbling description of ""the world from which he sprang/ So long ago,"" he leaves politely. And when the child reports the encounter to his grandmother: ""She murmured vaguely, 'Yes, that will be Walter./ He's such a dear. . . .'"" An accomplished exercise perhaps, but it all boils down to precious whimsy, with arch and arbitrary pictures to match.

Pub Date: Sept. 3, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Holt, Rinehart & Winston

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1980

Categories: CHILDREN'S